Judge Salvatore Vasta wins High Court stoush over judicial immunity from civil liability

A Brisbane judge has won a landmark decision in the High Court that he was not liable for damages after he jailed the 40-year-old father of two for contempt during a family law property dispute.

Judge Salvatore Vasta won his case in the nation’s highest court.

A Brisbane Federal Circuit Judge has won his case in the nation’s highest court, in a landmark decision which upholds the principle that judges should be immune from, or have a defence to lawsuits arising from their judicial work.

In a 137-page ruling handed down in Canberra on Wednesday, the High Court ruled that Judge Salvatore Vasta was not liable for damages for false imprisonment after he jailed the 40-year-old father of two for seven days in 2018 for contempt during a family law property dispute.

In 2023 Judge Vasta was found liable to pay more than $100,000 in damages including exemplary damages for false imprisonment and deprivation of liberty to the man who he jailed.

This came after a lower court in 2019 upheld the man’s appeal against Judge Vasta’s decision and set aside the declaration that he was in contempt of court and the order for his imprisonment.

The High Court - comprised of seven judges - has today held that all judges of courts referred to in the constitution are either immune from or have a defence to civil suit arising out of acts done in the exercise, or purported exercise, of their judicial function or capacity.

As Judge Vasta, who has been a judge since 2015, purported to perform such a function in convicting and sentencing the man, he was not liable to the man Mr Stradford for false imprisonment.

Following a two-day hearing in August last year, the High Court has ordered that the 2023 ruling by Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney that Judge Vasta must pay the man, who was not identified, damages and exemplary damages, be set aside.

“Judge Vasta enjoyed common law immunity in relation to the orders made in respect of (the man). Those conclusions are sufficient to dispose of these appeals,” Justice Simon Steward ruled, as part of a joint decision with six others.

The judges also held that the Commonwealth and Queensland were also not liable to the man for damages for false imprisonment.